Pretending: The brilliant new adult novel from Holly Bourne. Why be yourself when you can be perfect?

by Holly Bourne

  ‘I know.’ I watch her soothe herself with the memory, its magic making her think fondly of her husband for a moment or two.

  ‘Well, we’ll see. He’s not asked me out yet.’

  ‘He will.’

  ‘Well he might not.’

  ‘He will. And like I said, I’ve got a feeling about him.’

  ‘Don’t tell me, you think maybe this one could be different?’

  It’s too hot to be asked such pressing questions.

  ‘Have you considered, April, that it might be time to think about retiring from this particular role?’

  My clinical supervisor for work is a psychologist called Carol. She’s arranged neatly in her chair, pretending to be all wise and knowing, despite the fact it’s about ten million degrees in this office and I can see sweat glistening on her top lip.

  ‘Why would I want to do that?’ I squiggle about in my plastic chair, wipe the sweat from the underside of my thigh and cross my legs.

  ‘Well, some themes are starting to repeat quite often in this supervision. Most notably, how these shifts are altering your general view of men.’

  I nod. It’s true.

  ‘You’re coming up to two years working on the front line of this charity, that’s right, isn’t it?’

  I nod again, knowing where she’s going with this. Front-line workers tend to break around the two-year mark, especially in roles where you’re helping victims of sexual violence. I was warned about this by Mike when I first took the extra work on. It’s almost expected that you’ll resign before you get too soured and angry.

  ‘I don’t want to stop,’ I tell her. ‘I know it triggers me occasionally and makes me angry, but I don’t want to stop.’

  ‘Why not?’

  I don’t answer. I dodge her gaze and look around the cluttered, sweaty mess of our office’s meeting room. A brainstorm from an earlier meeting about new revenue streams droops helplessly from the wall, with the words, ‘become a donkey sanctuary’ scribbled across it as a joke.

  ‘April?’

  ‘I don’t know.’

  ‘We’ve discussed before that this may be linked to your own personal experience of rape?’

  I wipe the sweat off my legs again and re-cross them. ‘Well of course it’s something to do with that.’

  ‘You used to say that this role helped you work through what happened to you, but do you feel like maybe that’s changing? That maybe you’ve hit your limit? There’s nothing wrong with that, you know.’

  Once more, I don’t reply. My skin feels like it’s erupted into cactus spikes.

  ‘I have to do something,’ I tell her. ‘I have to feel I’m resisting somehow.’

  ‘To make up for the fact you weren’t able to resist when you were assaulted?’

  Why didn’t I tell him to stop? Why did I let him do that to me? If I ‘let’ him, then surely it wasn’t rape? No no no. You know it was, you know it was.

  I dig my fingernail into my thumb, take a breath, and look back up at my sweaty supervisor. ‘Probably.’

  ‘Are you OK, April?’

  ‘Yes, I’m fine. Look …’ I pick the skin around my nail bed. ‘What’s the psychological perspective on revenge?’

  ‘Revenge?’ she asks, writing the word down on her notepad, probably with a red flag symbol.

  ‘I’m just asking hypothetically,’ I say, in case she blabs to Mike even though these sessions are supposed to be private. ‘Have there ever been any studies into whether revenge is helpful?’

  ‘Embitterment is a common emotion for victims,’ Carol says, dodging the question. ‘It’s not unusual to desire that someone who hurt us should hurt too.’

  ‘What if it’s not just one person you’re mad at though?’ I ask. ‘What if it’s a whole group of people?’

  She makes another note then puts her pad down. ‘April, we’ve spent many of your supervisions talking about how this job, combined with what happened to you, has given you a negative view of men. And, despite me trying very hard to work through this with you, it only appears to be getting worse.’

  ‘That’s not my fault, that’s men’s fault.’

  ‘We’ve spoken many times about how every man is different, every human is different. A few bad apples do not reflect half the human population. You help a lot of alcoholics and drug addicts in your role, and yet you’re not coming here telling me everyone is an addict.’

  I resist the urge to roll my eyes. I resist the urge to do a lot of things that I really want to do: scream, swear, force her to read the emails I’m forced to read every day, and then yell ‘Do you blame me? Do you get it now? Do you?! DO YOU?!’ Get her to break. Cave in. Lean forward in her sweaty chair and whisper, ‘Look, I’m a woman too, I get it. Yes, men are awful, fucking broken and awful, but I’m not allowed to say that because then I’ll get struck off, but I promise you I’m secretly agreeing with you’ …

  ‘… As I’ve said, these feelings only seem to be getting stronger, and it doesn’t seem to be having a good impact on your mental health. Your company understands these things often have a time limit. It’s not like you’ll get fired, you’ll just step into something different. Something less in your face.’

  I’m a bit panicked now. I don’t want to stop my shifts. I’d only ever been a project manager before coming to We Are Here, lost and scared and not recovered from Ryan. But, after a year, and after organising the training of so many volunteers, I’d been asked if I was interested in training to do shifts too. It was the first thing that eased the pain a bit. That made me feel worthwhile, rather than a broken pile of pieces. ‘Are you going to tell Mike on me?’

  She smiles and shakes her head. ‘You know these slots are confidential. I’m here for you, April, and only you. I’m saying this for your benefit. I can’t force you to stop.’

  ‘I just don’t think it’s fair, what you’re saying. Making out that my reaction is wrong. I think hating men considering everything men do is a completely normal response. I shouldn’t have to “work on myself”,’ I air quote, ‘in order not to get upset when men routinely rape women.’

  She reaches out her finger to punctuate my rant. ‘But they aren’t all the same.’

  ‘Yes they are!’

  Suddenly I’m standing and I’m yelling, with sweat dripping down the back of my legs. I’m also shaking and trying not to cry and my throat feels stitched shut and Carol is looking worried, trying to get me to sit my hot flesh back down on the sticky chair.

  It takes a moment or two to pass, for me to gain control of whatever’s just happened. I keep saying ‘I’m fine, honestly I’m fine’, which isn’t very convincing.

  ‘April,’ she says, once I’m sitting down and my breathing is vaguely back to normal. ‘Be kind to yourself. Maybe at least think about taking a break from your shift work.’

  ‘I can’t.’

  ‘You can, and it doesn’t have to mean anything. It’s just a break.’

  ‘I’ll think about it,’ I tell her, when I know I won’t. But I play good employee and allow the supervision to return to normal. Carol and I go through some of my answers to the email questions I found tricky, and we tweak a template answer for the virginity questions that wasn’t quite working.

  What if revenge is good?

  Do we ever allow ourselves to ask that question? What if turning the other cheek is not the answer? Because I’ll tell you what. I’ve lived my whole life as a girl and I’ve turned so many goddamned cheeks I’m surprised I have any skin left on my face. And yet it’s never once made me feel better. Not like how I feel when I think about Gretel.

  ‘Do have a think about what I’ve said,’ Carol says when the fifty minutes is up.

  ‘I will.’ I stand up to go back to the office. I can see Matt waiting through the glass wall, pulling that nervous, ‘trying not to look like I’m about to go into therapy’ face, as he sits on the chair outside. I push through the glass door and high-five him, like we’re on a WWF tag team. ‘You’re
up,’ I say. ‘Want some tissues?’

  ‘You’re hilarious,’ he mutters, but he smiles as he steps in. I hear Carol say, ‘Welcome Matt, take a seat’, before the glass door closes again.

  I walk around a bank of desks and arrive at my own, where Katy has left a slice of cake with a note: ‘post supervision treat’. She’s in a meeting, so I can’t thank her. Instead I sit down to emails and more emails, just as my phone vibrates.

  Josh: So Gretel, how about we do that thing where we actually meet in person and politely try to decide if we fancy one another?

  It’s such a smooth message that you could spread it on toast. Credit where credit is due.

  I wait an entire day before I reply.

  It’s not even hard. I have back-to-back meetings the rest of the afternoon. I go out for drinks after work, and then meet Kerry, a friend from the charity I used to work for, and we sit through an hour of OKish theatre at Soho Theatre. We go for drinks afterwards and she complains about her husband being so busy and stressed since his promotion.

  Megan’s still up when I get in, mood-boarding the launch event she’s just been chucked into doing, magazines cut up and discarded all over the flat, so I stay up and help her, and we finish a bottle of wine, and say we can’t believe we are up this late on a school night, and shit, we’re going to be hungover tomorrow. I fall into bed without taking my make-up off, and wake up way too thirsty at 3.30 a.m., down a pint of water and then manage to get back to sleep, kicking my covers off in the muggy heat. Then I press snooze three times instead of two, which throws off my morning routine, and I have to rush around, layering on the deodorant because this heat will not break, and run out the door to the Tube, the red brick of the posh flats blurring past me, thinking how atrocious it is to be running when it’s this hot. I collapse onto a train and wipe the sweat off the bits of me it’s appropriate to wipe in public. The carriage roars into the tunnel and is swallowed by darkness, and it’s only then that I think of Joshua and of his invitation.

  I read back the message. It still makes me smile.

  Gretel hits the ‘reply’ button.

  Gretel: Sure, why not?

  Joshua suggests he and Gretel meet on Tuesday, but Gretel can’t do Tuesday, even though she can. In fact, Gretel switches her drinks with her university friend, Vicky, to Tuesday so now she’s not even lying about being busy, she is just actually busy, being so bloody great at living life. Gretel suggests Thursday instead, because it’s important she show Joshua that she is interested in meeting him. She doesn’t want to put him off just yet, but he also needs to know how busy and great she is. Joshua suggests they go out for cocktails at this place he knows. She says sure. Thursday it is. Cocktails it is. Can we make it six thirty instead of six because I have a thing? It’s not real, she just needs him to know she’s the sort of girl who has things.

  • Test One – Gretel’s Guide to First Dates

  * * *

  First dates are nerve-wracking, so it’s totally natural to be nervous. Just don’t show your nerves, all right? That will put them off. Meet somewhere fun to show off how fun you are because you really want them to see you’re fun. Dinner is a bit too formal. A cinema is not right because you can’t talk to one another, and you won’t be able to entrance him with all your eyelash fluttering and hiding the more negative parts of your personality. Maybe a casual drink? But somewhere interesting. You know what? It’s sort of better if you let him decide where you go. Remember, it’s the first date, you have to be casual.

  Of course you should make an effort with your appearance, but don’t make it obvious you’ve made too much effort. Not too sexy, not too prudish. Remember – channel Goldilocks. Stay in the middle of the sexy spectrum. Stay in the middle of every spectrum. Be as bland as you fucking can to trick him into wanting to spend more time with you. With all that said, it’s really important on a first date to keep the bland chat interesting. The important thing about first-date conversation is that it should be breezy but also create an emotional connection. Dodge the dreaded ‘small talk’ and ask him deeper questions like ‘why?’, and follow that with more ‘whys?’. He will start opening up and he’ll associate the emotional connection with you. If he asks you questions, it’s your chance to show him how cool, and busy, and interesting, and kick-ass, yet sensitive you are. Mention how much you want to travel to Africa and that you’re thinking of booking a ticket soon. All men want to be with a girl who wants to go to Africa. Don’t mention exes. Ever. I mean, duh. Yes, you are both single in your thirties so that means, without a doubt, that somewhere along the line for both of you some shit has gone seriously, painfully, wrong, but now is not the time to acknowledge that elephant in the room! So, keep it light and pretend you want to go to Africa. If you really want to go to Africa, even better! Remember not to swear and steer away from contentious subjects like politics or art or your emotional responses to life’s hardships. Keep it positive!

  Oh, if you’re going somewhere to eat, make sure you don’t order salad. Men don’t want to spend the rest of their lives with someone who orders fucking salad. Order whatever you like because you’re strong and independent and don’t care what anyone thinks, just don’t order salad; even if you’re in the mood for salad and that’s genuinely what you feel like eating, don’t eat it, OK?

  When the bill comes, make sure you offer to split it because this is modern life. But, also, if he wants to pay it, then let him so he’s not emasculated. You can pay on the next date – but we’re getting ahead of ourselves. This is still only the first date here. You’re not on the second yet, are you, you fucked-up mess reading advice about first dates?

  If the date has gone well, and there’s sexual chemistry and an emotional connection and you’ve not ruined all that by revealing any unattractive human traits, then the big question is, do you kiss? Clearly sex is a no-no, you slut. Kissing is OK though. Sort of. As long as you follow some simple tips, sorry, I meant rules: Let him kiss you. Do not kiss him first. Even if it’s clear he wants to kiss you, don’t lean in. Ideally don’t kiss until dates two or three anyway. Let there be build-up. Oh, and afterwards, wait for them to contact you. Don’t do it first, because: men. Anyway, you’re too busy being awesome and high-value and not needing them very much to even be worrying about messaging him, right?

  It only works if you know there are plenty of men out there that you can spark with and you never worry about dying alone. You can’t go out dating with the fear that you may die alone. I mean, that’s essentially the sole reason of dating – to meet someone so you don’t die alone – but you’re not allowed to think that. You have to accidentally find love on the date you’re going on to try and find the love of your life. Otherwise you’re just desperate and I can smell that from here – jeez.

  * * *

  I’m weirdly calm as I get ready in the cramped office bathroom. No matter how many first dates I’ve been on in my life (clue: a lot), they’ve never lost their nerve-wrackingness. I’ve never been able to overcome the sheer weirdness of sitting with a stranger, both of you trying to figure out if you’re capable of falling in love with one another. The instant judgements you both make, telling the same stories that you know go down well, but clearly not too well otherwise you wouldn’t still be going on dates. I’m not wearing my usual first-date outfit but instead what Gretel would wear to a first date.

  He would want Gretel to look effortlessly amazing, which, of course, takes a shit load of effort. If Gretel was real, she’d just tumble into the date straight from work, her face glowing, and hair piled up – looking just as extraordinarily beautiful as she does when she wakes up next to you in the morning, probably with a blowjob or something. In man world, Gretel takes no longer than five minutes getting ready to look so pretty. But Gretel isn’t real. I am just playing her part. I’m pretty enough. I’ve been told by a few men, without asking, that objectively I’m beautiful (I refer to these compliments as ‘unforced errors’). But I’m not a model, and so it t
akes quite a lot of make-upping to achieve the desired Gretel look.

  There’s a banging at the door just as I’m wiggling a mascara brush through my eyelashes. ‘Are you dead?’ Mike calls. ‘It would be a terrible shame if you were, especially as I really need the loo.’

  I smirk. ‘Sorry, I’ll be right out.’ I scoop up the contents of my make-up bag and stuff it all back in. I’ve ‘only’ got on primer, light-reflecting foundation, eyelid brightener, mascara, a tiny smudge of eyeliner, blusher, highlighter, and a red lip stain to achieve Gretel’s natural beauty. I pull my jeans down, kicking off my Converse so I can yank them off over my feet. Then I shake off my blouse and bra, sniff my armpits to see how they’re holding up, and step into a strappy maxi dress. I lean on the door, because you can only unlock it if you get the angle completely right, and stumble out into the raised eyebrows of Mike.

  ‘You look nice,’ he comments, but not in a pervy way. He’s one of those extraordinary men who manage to exude absolutely no weird sex-vibes whatsoever. We were all surprised to learn he was, a) heterosexual, and b) married with children.

  ‘Thanks. How late you working?’

  He pinches the top of his nose, while letting out a small sigh of exhaustion. ‘Hopefully not much longer. Though I’ve missed putting the children to bed. Again. Anyway, have a good night, I really do need to pee.’

  I make my way back to my desk to collect my things. Still no nerves. I stuff what I can into my bag, and leave the bulk of my crap under my desk to take home tomorrow. I doubt Gretel’s the sort of girl who drags along an overflowing bag. Every man I’ve ever dated seems to take it as a personal insult that I need to carry things around with me. ‘Why is this so heavy? Do you really need all that stuff? It’s OK to leave the house without the whole kitchen sink, you know?’ And then, hilariously, it is mostly them who end up rummaging in my bag to retrieve all the useful items you’ve stored there. ‘Can I have some of your water? Do you have any paracetamol? Are those mints? Can I have one? And, oh, can I put my wallet in your bag?’